Hi,

Is their anyway to get this tool to work on Google Custom Search results? If you could that would be fantastic.

Thanks

I probably can't make it work on Google custom search results. It may be possible but I just don't know how and do not see much upside to doing so. The source code is open if you want to see if you can find a programmer to do it.

Here is a repost:

Hi I am using the latest version of firefox and seo for firefox. Whenever I set anything to automatic, all I get is a question mark "?" at where the value is suppose to be at. However if I set it to on-demand and then click on the question mark, it would return the value fine. What is going on? Why is automatic not working for me? Anyone else experience this?

After you set everything to automatic you have to save it by clicking the button in the prompt at the bottom of that mini window. You may have to restart Firefox after the change as well.

I really liked the Google cached pages option. The google trends option replacing it never seems to work.

Can you please replace it or create another version of the tool with it in.

Much appreciated.

Matt

I just installed version 2.7.4 after upgrading my Firefox to 3.0. I'm familiar with the SEO for Firefox software's operation, as I have been a long time user under FF2.

Right now, when I enter a search term into Google, all the results are showing numbers related to Google itself, rather than the domains and pages of the search result. For example, every result shows the following:

PR: -
Y! Links: 234,000,000
Y! .edu Links: 1,620,000
Y! .gov Links: 119,000
Y! Page Links: 35

...and the links bring up yahoo pages counting links to google.com or http://www.google.com/url?sa=U.

I've tried several searches, a couple that I normally keep track of and then a couple of random phrases, and get the same situation each time.

Search queries in Yahoo are working fine, and all the pageranks and link counts are correct there.

Is this a known issue?

Also, I don't have any other extensions (or even themes) installed yet.

Hi NJ WebGuy
I think that may have been a glitch. Could you try uninstalling and reinstalling the extension?

Hi Aaron,

Great tool you've got here!

I had a quick question - is there a reason that the tool uses the yahoo search for links:

linkdomain:www.example.com -site:www.example.com

instead of using the Yahoo Site Explorer (which uses the link:www.example.com command) and with 'inlinks' switched to 'except from this domain'.

I get dramatically different results for the two above. Do you find more accurate results with one over the other? I've been using the Yahoo Site Explorer for awhile now instead of the linkdomain command.

Cheers,
Rob

The tool is designed to allow you to sort through backlinks with SEO for firefox turned on...the complexity of doing that while allowing multiple options (site explorer and the default search results) probably would not add much value to the tool and could confuse some users.

Ok cheers for that! Thanks again for a great tool :)

Hi Aaron,

First of all kudos for such an impressive tool, it has made my life much easier.

Quick question. I used to check the Y!page links directly from Google SERPs to check competitors link equity and the results were displayed nicely with all the statistics provided that I could export into an excel file. I tried that today and I saw that those results are not showing up in Yahoo any more. I tried to make a simple query in Yahoo and neither the statistics appeared also.

Any bug with Yahoo?

Thanks and keep up the great work.

can you try it again now? and verify the settings are set up to pull in those data points automatically?

I tried again but the features don't show up in Yahoo regardless of the data points being configured as automatic or on request. Maybe I am missing something.

It is still a great tool for Google though. Thanks a lot.

can you verify you are using 2.7.6

Brilliant!!! Thanks a lot Aaron. I updated to 2.7.6 and now it is working fine.

Thanks a lot again.

Whats up - Google has changed its html, and SEO for Firefox is not working :(

Are you able to get you wonderful tool happening again?

Yes I noticed the same. Damn it.

Isn't working for me either... god, I feel so crippled.

Hi there,

JustSearch has found a quick fix to get SEO for firefox plugin working again:

http://www.justsearching.co.uk/JustBlog/seo-for-firefox-broke.html

Hope that will helps.

It should be fixed today or tomorrow.

I just used the fix that JustBen linked to. Works like a charm.

All was working fine before the Google update and now it is not working. I seem to have the latest version (2.8.4) and it still doesn't work.

I have tried the fix from JustBen but these setting already appear to be correct. Is anyone else still having problems or can provide some other suggestion to get this fixed.

SEO for Firefox is working for me right now. Are you using it on US Google SERPs or another country (like .co.uk)? Is it working on Yahoo! for you?

If it is not working on either have you tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it?

After about 30 minutes of searching I didn't find any other fitting place to post this, so I'll leave a comment here.

I've partially ported "SEO for Firefox" to Opera (as a bunch of user js files) and I would like to know your thoughts on the issue before releasing it to the general public.

I couldn't port some features (e.g. CSV generation) because Opera isn't as extensible as FF. I also had to use several hacks to get around Opera's limitations (no permanent storage API for user scripts, no cross-domain XmlHttpRequest) so I expect the script to be buggy. Nevertheless, it already Works For Me(TM) :)

Feel free to contact me via the email address listed in my profile if you want to discuss this privately.

Hi W-Shadow
Feel free to post a link here if you like. :)

Sure, here it is then : SEO for Opera.

Hi Aaron,

Excellent plugin. I used one similar in the past but the ability to customise the settings in this is much better.

Can I make a suggestion - I'd love to be able to add sites I wish to track. If they appeared in the results, the plugin should inform me of their position at the top of the page.

Seems simple but can't find it any where.

Thanks
Donal

Hi Donal
We offer a rank checker plug in.

I am getting the same problem as NJWebGuy posted. I have version 2.9.0 and version 3.0.3 of Firefox.

"Right now, when I enter a search term into Google, all the results are showing numbers related to Google itself, rather than the domains and pages of the search result. For example, every result shows the following:

PR: -
Y! Links: 234,000,000
Y! .edu Links: 1,620,000
Y! .gov Links: 119,000
Y! Page Links: 35

...and the links bring up yahoo pages counting links to google.com or http://www.google.com/url?sa=U.

I've tried several searches, a couple that I normally keep track of and then a couple of random phrases, and get the same situation each time."

is that across all search results or just some? have you tried clearing cookies & restarting the browser to see if that fixed the issue?

Hello

First of all - thank you for your incredible tool!

But the problem - it seems the google search tool (sorry, don't know how to name it correctly) has stopped working after yesterday's google improvement (with searchwiki, socializing etc.) If I expressed myself not clear, then in another words: you bar disappeared from below results on google page.

What to do??

if you log out of the google account it will work. and in the next couple days we should have a version that works even if you are logged in.

I have the same problem as Rick1, i get all the same results for google, but Yahoo is working correctly...

f.e., Google search results for 'seo for firefox' gives *all* results the same values :

#1 | PR: - | Google Cache Date: - | Age: 11-1998 | del.icio.us: 30,013 | del.icio.us Page Bookmarks: ? | Diggs: ? | Digg's Popular Stories: ? | Stumbleupon: ? | Y! Links: 431,000,000 | Y! .edu Links: 2,830,000 | Y! .gov Links: 375,000 | Y! Page Links: 72 |

#3 | PR: - | Google Cache Date: - | Age: 11-1998 | del.icio.us: 30,013 | del.icio.us Page Bookmarks: ? | Diggs: ? | Digg's Popular Stories: ? | Stumbleupon: ? | Y! Links: 431,000,000 | Y! .edu Links: 2,830,000 | Y! .gov Links: 375,000 | Y! Page Links: 72 |

My cache is clean, firefox restarted (has the latest updates), and i'm not logged in into Google. This problem is for all searches (tried a lot, all same problem). The strange thing Yahoo search works perfect.. screenshots of both searches :

Google results screenshot

Yahoo results screenshot

please check what might be wrong, very strange as Yahoo is working, and Google not....??

thx for your help....

hi rene1
can you try uninstalling the extension, restarting firefox, and then updating to the newest version of seo 4 firefox

Congrats on the wonderful update. The new version is great with social media data and the XRay.

However, it seems the DMoz data has some errors. I am getting many DMoz entries for some sites. When I click on the DMoz link, it takes me to the Google Directory results. But when I enter the exact directory page, I don't find any entry for the site.

And even when I go to www.dmoz.org to cross check, I don't see any entry.

For example, if I search for Mahalo, SEO 4 Firefox shows around 756 DMoz entries for mahalo.com . But when I go to DMoz.org, they have only 125 entries. Am I missing something or is it some error?

Also, for popular sites, I have noted a maximum value of 100 for Twitter. I mean when a site seems to have less Twitter mentions, the SEO4FF extension shows that correct. But I never see any Twitter value above 100, even for sites like CNN that have several Twitter mentions in every 24 hours. Is it by default or am I getting this only?

that is the easily attainable limit with the twitter api...it gets hard to go beyond 100

with dmoz we show pages that reference a URL...not DMOZ listings. so for Mahalo it would be like this
http://www.google.com/search?q=mahalo.com&cat=gwd%2FTop
you can click the data source link near each data point to see what data we are grabbing

Get it now. Thanks for the support.

About pages referencing the URLs, with a normal search for [mahalo.com], I find a lot of noise.

Like on the first page results, there is mahalogrille.com and mahalominerals.com, which don't seem to have any mention of mahalo.com (the exact domain) but may be appearing because of the word mahalo in their URLs.

Also appearing at #18 is http://www.bigkahunasbbq.com/ and on #20 is http://www.kbeamer.com/bent.html, which both appear because they mention the word the word mahalo (clearly not related to the site mahalo.com)

So would using exact search "domain.com" improve the signal to noise ratio. Just my two cents if they may be of help. The previous noisy results have disappeared and the results are now down to 120s from 750s with exact search.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22mahalo.com%22&cat=gwd%2FTop

I agree. I think Google loosened up their directory search, and that using an exact match would be better than the current broad match.

I am having the same issue as Rick1 and Rene1. All the data is the same for each search result. And PR is always blank. I have uninstalled, cleared cache, and reinstalled/restarted with no luck. I am running Firefox 3.0.5 and SEO for Firefox 3.0.8. Thanks.

Kudos for adding the affiliate links to SEMRush and BOTW. For some weird, detrimental reasons, the typical internet public has developed a sort of hatred for anything commercial, which seems to be the reason why commercial, e-commerce sites are never welcomed on social media sites, though ad-based sites aren't any less commercial in my opinion.

Use of affiliate links should be promoted as much as possible, and usage of this by well-known figures like you, SugarRae, etc. will greatly help in making it common and acceptable. Otherwise, how else can an expert (even partly) justify his time spent on writing quality blogs.

I used to go out of my way to under-monetize with an intent of not being seen as being similar to the *exceptionally sleazy* email list marketers. But the truth is...these are services I would recommend anyway, and I did spend $10,000's (or maybe even $100,000's) over the years developing free tools to give away.

Less than 1% of the people using our tools buy from us and less than 10% even bother linking to us...this is just a way for that other 90% of users to have the opportunity to pay for all the value they are getting for free.

though ad-based sites aren't any less commercial in my opinion.

Spot on with that! That is another thing that I think is remarkably stupid about the web. Some people think affiliate links are sleazy, while at the same time they have no problem publishing AdSense ads on their site - ads which give them little to no editorial control AND often recommend scams.

I'm getting a 404 error using the keyword research (tool on your site). Here's an example link that's triggering the error:

tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/suggestions/my keyword phrase#results

Maybe this was a change to a rewrite rule on your site? I noticed it two days ago and thought it was a fluke, but I've reinstalled the addon, and the broken URL is supplied for both Yahoo and Google searches.

I'm using Firefox 3.0.5 & SEO for Firefox 3.0.9

Here's a screenshot demonstrating the click that causes the error:

http://www.inowebmarketing.com/tmp/2.2009/seobook404.png

I need to fix that...doah! give me a second!

I have been using SEO for firefox for quite a while now and all of a sudden the search results for Google does not show up. I have tried re-installing both the SEO add-on and Firefox and I still have the same problem. Weird thing is that Yahoo! search results come out fine with everything there ( Y!links, Y!edu's, Alexa, etc...). I do not know what to do and I desperately need this for my job.

Anything I should be doing?

Thanks,
Andy

Are you using Google Gears or something like that? Are you being sent Ajax search results?

I was monitoring a competitor and found some interesting facts.
a) It has a page rank of 9 (very high for that particular type of site)
b) Plenty of backlinks from .edu sites.

Dwelling into the source code I noticed a jackpot (possibly not duplicable). The site has created a transmenu module that all the .edu sites use and in the source code there is a H1 back link.

3) DMOZ sites are high
4) Yahoo Biz sites high

Again dwelling into the sites listing in DMOZ or Yahoo Biz they are using the transmenu and links appear in the source.

The question is what affect does this (link back from sites) and then displayed in DMOZ listing or Yahoo biz linking have. I noticed that the SEO tool does take you to the search listing for the site in question in Yahoo biz and DMOZ, therefore is this site getting weight from DMOZ and Yahoo Biz without a physical presence there?

We don't search DMOZ...we search the Google Directory (a DMOZ clone) for the URL string, which should match the site if it is listed, and will show some other DMOZ listed pages that have the URL string on them (perhaps as a link or at least as text on the page).

The Yahoo! Directory's search function has recently got a bit less comprehensive in my opinion. Perhaps their API is returning more accurate results than their actual directory search service is.

I understand, however the URL is entered into the search box of the Google Directory and the Yahoo Directory and these return the results; but why do these two directories do this and what can be the benefits?

The way I am seeing it is that there is a potential to created a plugin or a module for a CMS that will have the link embedded in and need not be displayed on the front but just in the source-code and this is sufficient to get a PR 9 and frontpage Google. It has certainly worked for this particular site although they have been able to capture a dozen .edu sites.

I have popular modules for CMS's spanning over approx' 10,000+ site. I will try this experiment and see the results.

thanks

The best thing I have found about this plug-in is the ability to show everything in the serps AND the ease of downloading it in CSV. I frequently do that while using &num=100 and the CSV gives a pretty good picture of everything in no time. Below are some of the things/recommendations (based upon my frequent use) that I feel can help you improve this already-great tool:

1) Some sites block Web Archive bot in Robots.txt. (eg: http://web.archive.org/web/*/academia-research.com/). If possible, you can have some indication in the 'AGE' field. Anything other than the '-' (dash) that usually comes for new sites.

2) Just like you have added Yahoo position, you can add Google.co.uk position, Google.com gl=us position (pretty useful for us guys in Asia), Google.ca, and especially Google Maps position (as Local is getting boost now).

3) For blogs on famous platforms like blogspot or wordpress (like example.wordpress.com or sethgodin.typepad.com), the data pulled is for the main domain (typepad.com). If possible, it would be great to have the all the data from Age to cached to Majestic Domains for the subdomain instead. I guess it can make the tool slower if it has to check for this everytime for each result but you can add an option if possible.

4) Have a button to turn all fields to ‘Automatic’.

5) Add another field for Domain PR. I guess you have this in the SEO toolbar though.

6) Another option to pull the IP of site. This can turn this tool into another useful backlink analysis tool. Doing a Yahoo backlink query and seeing the IPs of 100 linkers in CSV can often reveal strange pictures.

9) New fields for Yahoo backlink stats from UK Universities (.ac.uk) and Gov.uk

I didn’t like the tone of some of the recommenders in the above messages. Some seemed to demand too much and pressed on their suggestions as if they are paying you for all this. I don't want to seem like them and already appreciate all you have done so far. And I ain’t a technical guy who would know how easy/difficult and cheap/expensive can it be to implement these suggestions. These are merely suggestions for improvements rather than demands, so that you can have things to consider when you next decide to have a major upgrade. To be more accurate, these are the things I have usually missed in this tool.

I hope these will help everyone.

Thanks

Thanks for the recommendations Affanlaghari :)

Hi Aron,

I would love to use this tool except it only shows question marks next to the words, where the stats should be... Please help...

from the overview page:

Settings:

SEO for Firefox can be turned on or off globally. In addition, each particular piece of information also has three settings

* Auto - automatically pulls in the data whenever you search Google or Yahoo!
* On-Demand - link to pull in data will be present in search results, but the data will not be automatically pulled in until you click on the associated link
* Hidden - if you do not find a particular data point useful you can remove that data point from the tool output.

By default most of the tool features are in the On-Demand state (not on Auto). This is done to ensure that those who would most likely be abusive users (by not following our usage tips) will be unable to use the tool to its full capability since they would not read these instructions on how to change the settings.

Hi,

I had a problem and solved it :)

If you logged in here and downloaded the toolbar (which rocks by the way) but couldn't figure out where the button at the bottom that does the special page rank search is... DON'T WORRY!

On the Tools page on seobook, select SEO For Firefox - it's a separate plugin. Doh!

Thanks for all these tools

Simon

glad you got it fixed Simon :)

Problem: the #1 - #10 that should appear on the left of the SEOForFirefox extension are appearing in reverse order - from #10 for the top one, to #1 for the bottom result on the page. If I increase the number of search results the problem still occurs.

Using the most up to date version of SEO4FF (downloaded today), and the most recent version of FF (3.5) on MacOSX 10.5.7.

This problem occasionally happened for me on FF2.x as well but I can't remember what I did to fix it or if it just came right by itself.

Any thoughts on what's going on?

one other user had this problem and it was a conflict with another extension. I forget what extension it conflicts with though.

Hi there

I am using SEO for FireFox 3.1.3/FireFox 3.5 on a linux machine. It works brilliantly in all respects save one: for the longest time the results were skewed when I clicked one of the links below a search result in Google (haven't checked the others). I am referring to the PR: ? | Google Cache Date: ? | Traffic Value: ? | Age: ? etc.

Without going into the long and torturous tale of how I discovered the problem and it's workaround, here's what has been happening: I also use xmarks (formerly foxmarks) for my bookmarks. For reasons unknown, all the links were getting xmarks inserted into them, as follows: http://www.semrush.com/info/xmarks.com?ref=798325166

That was for a search and result that has nothing to do with xmarks. I did note however, that the wikipedia entry directly above this one does not have the xmarks code inserted. As this result is a commercial listing, perhaps that is a clue...?

I have no idea if this is a SEO 4 FireFox issue or an xmarks issue. The work around is easy, turn off xmarks.

Thanks Marc

Thanks for the feedback Marc. Glad you got it working! :)

It appears that SEO 4 firefox pulls values off Yahoo for incoming links to site and incoming links to the specific page. It would be useful to have values for internal links to page and total number of pages.

It would be nice to see if the search term was used in the heading and body copy (x times in body)

I am building a tool to find low hanging fruit based on your data. If a site has 200 possible search terms it would be nice to see which ones people are competing for.

Thanks

This tool is not working with Namoroka 3.6 Alpha 1 (FF 3.6)
Please update this great tool.

We do not keep testing Alpha browsers though. The only way we could justify that sort of testing is if we charged for the tool.

Hi,

I can't seem to get the page rank to pull into the results. I have checked that it is turned on in the settings and have tried reinstalling it but just get a dash (-) every time on the PR. Any help much appreciated.

Cheers

Do any of the other datapoints pull in?

I've got the same problem as the integrater above. No PR results shown. It does pull in the data points for all other categories. I thought it may be a problem with the new version of firefox, so I installed version 3.0.14. I also reinstalled seo for firefox to no avail. Any advice would be appreciated. I was using the most recent 3.5 version of firefox when the problem started. I should mention that the tool worked perfectly until that update of firefox. Thank you.

If you leave the tool on too long (like always have it on while you are searching, even when you are not doing competitive research) it might temporarily block you from being able to scrape PageRank (or other data points)

I certainly am guilty of leaving it on for regular research, and will keep that in mind if I can get it working again. I figured that a reinstall of the browser and extension would get it to work. Have you had any other issues with people not being able to see page rank? Any suggestions as to how I could remedy the problem? Thank you for your quick response above.

Leave it off for a few days and see if that fixes it.

How to i export the title and the description that is available in the search result??

Thanks

It does not yet do that, but we may add that feature soon maniacrules.

I have tried several times to install and it says it was installed and restarts firefox, but the tool doesn't shoe up. I have no conflicting software or tools/extensions that would cause this. Any help is appreciated.

security software might be an issue. it might also help to clear cookies, restart the browser, and go through the login and install process again.

I have it installed for some time, but since recently it only displays question marks, I have to click on the little "i" icon to get the information about a site.
Any fixes for that? Using the newest Firefox.

Read the set up instructions.